fabric of her gown with both hands against the solidity of her belly, whispering, “When the time comes I must think of you.” Her voice was as soft as midnight itself. “Then I won’t be so afraid.”
THESE THINGS TO BE DONE
Grizz woke to a sound that made him sit up in the recliner where he’d last fallen asleep—hoofs click-clattering on wood. “The hell,” he said. The sagging porch outside his open window groaned under an immense weight.
His head throbbed from downing an entire bottle of Seagram’s. Sometime in the night he’d torn kitchen towels into strips and wrapped his wounded hands in these rags. The muscles in his legs felt watery when he stood to work the kink out of his neck.
Staring him eye to eye through the living room window was the bull, named Ferdinand by the boy, though he’d warned Seth time and again about naming livestock. The bull’s huge head filled up the frame, one dark eye milky with cataracts, as he leaned inside the open window and sniffed at the sun-faded curtains Jo had handmade years ago. “You son of a bitch,” Grizz shouted hoarsely, thinking the bull meant to eat his wife’s curtains.
At the sound of his voice the bull snorted “Whuff,” blowing mucus from his nostrils before ambling down the creaking porch stairs.
Grizz kicked the empty bottle of whiskey and sent it spinning across the hardwood floor. He was barefoot, and his feet were dirty, as if he’d been wandering all night long, and God knows he felt like he’d been on a long journey. Before he even reached the window he knew what he would see.
The fifty-odd head of Belted Galloway cattle the Fallons kept pastured behind electric fences were spread out on the front lawn and in the far alfalfa fields where they would gorge themselves sick unto death if he let them. They milled in the apple orchard, eating the small brown fruit that had fallen early. They lazed in the shade under the big oak where Seth had built his fort. The boy had not been there to feed them these last few nights, and Grizz had lacked the strength and will, so the cattle had busted down the fence to reach what grass remained in the yard.
The bull must have sensed him eyeing them because he turned toward Grizz now. He stood bandy-legged, a great mop top of clownish curly hair on his head. Long past his prime, almost half a head shorter than the heifers, the bull was kept because he was a pure-bred Beltie and because Grizz loved the spunk in him. The bull turned his rump toward him and lifted his tail to drop some steaming turds on the lawn.
Grizz’s blood went hot and all the aches in his body burned away when he spotted the ax he used to cut kindling for the stove. He picked it up and felt in his bones the thunk it would make cracking open the bull’s skull. He walked out on the porch, all raw inside, like someone had scraped out his guts with a spoon, and he looked at the chaos the cattle had wrought in the night, how they spread out all over creation. Some might wander toward the county road and be killed by the semis passing there. They were senseless, stupid beasts, and they had made a mess of his yard, and he was going to kill the bull for it and leave his carcass for the rendering truck.
He let the porch door slap shut behind him. A few of the cows and calves lifted their heads when they saw him coming, but the bull kept his back to him. It would be a hell of a time getting them back inside the fence. One man couldn’t do it alone. Seth. He was remembering now, and it stopped him in his tracks. Grizz had been on a bender the last couple of days. Every few hours the phone would ring, an angry buzz in his ears that he ignored, knowing it was the pastor or the funeral home or the sheriff or some goddamn newspaper calling for a statement. Finally, after a night of it, he ripped the jack from the wall and pulped the phone on the floor, blue wires spilling out like innards.
Wild thoughts moved in him when he was liquored. He had not seen the body, and as long as he had not he could believe whatever he wanted. Seth, his clever